A clergyman in Yorkshire, visiting a dying man, observed him putting his hand out of the bed and eating something from time to time, so he said he was glad to see he could eat a little, when the man with a funny look said, "They're my funeral biscuits. The missis went to the town and bought them, and she's out to-day, and I'm eating them."
A poor woman at Halifax talking of her husband, said he had tried everything--he had been a churchman, then a Wesleyan, then a Baptist, and now he was a Yarmouth bloater. (She meant Plymouth brother, but had got her seaports mixed.)
A girl in Hebden Bridge came to the vicar to put up her banns of marriage. When all was done she lingered at the door and the vicar said, "Well, Mary, is there anything more?" To this she replied rather shyly, "Please, sir, will t' same spurrings do for another chap?" (_Spurrings_ is a Yorkshire word for banns, and is really _speerings_ or _inquirings_.)
At Thornhill an old woman lost her brother and went continually to talk to him at his grave. One day she was overheard saying, "Eh, William, t' pigs turned out well. We'd a bit o' spar rib yesterday, and a wish thee could ha' tasted it. And a've sold t' hams, William."
A former vicar of Dewsbury at a funeral in a cemetery, where the grave was under the wall of the chapel, remarked to the widow, "It's a nice sheltered spot." "Ah, yes," she answered, "my poor husband never could bear a draught."
The remainder of the stories in the note-book are concerning such varied matters that it is impossible to classify them, and they are given here--such of them as it is deemed right to publish--as a concluding chapter of this little volume:
A friend of mine met with a timber-merchant one day, who said he thought the Old Testament was not very historical, and contained things no one could believe. He said, for instance, that he had made rather accurate calculations of the size and weight of the Ark, and it was simply absurd to think that the Israelites could carry such a huge thing about with them in the wilderness for forty years, even without the animals.
At a funeral of a wife the undertaker put the bereaved husband in the first carriage with his mother-in-law. When the widower heard of the arrangement he remonstrated with the undertaker, and asked if he could not go in one of the other carriages. Being told that this would be remarked upon, as the nearest relatives always went in the first carriage, he yielded, saying, "Ah, well, if it must be so, it must; but you've quite spoilt my day for me."